New study probes amalgamation of Greater Sudbury, and prompts more questions

It's been 15 years since seven lower-tiered communities and a few unincorporated townships amalgamated to form the City of Greater Sudbury.

New research from the Northern Policy Institute looked intowhether this consolidationwas fiscally beneficial.

James Cuddy is the in-house economist and researcher behind the study.

He says, in general, amalgamation is supposed to alleviate fiscal pressures.The study was launched to see if the amalgamationofGreater Sudbury did what it was supposed to do. That is, did it alleviate fiscal pressure?

The research found amalgamation provided savings in general government expenditures, like administration, corporatemanagement and program supports.

The research looked at expenditures, from before and after amalgamation,from six municipalservices: cemetery, fire, garbage collection, libraries, parks/recreation and street lighting. All had been responsibilitieswithinthelower-tiered communities.

Cuddy's researchfound the cost in mostof these expenditures increased after the communitiesjoined forces, with the exception of street lighting.

When he started to collect the information Cuddysays much of the data he was looking for wasn't openly available.

Transparency aroadblock

Herequested the stats on expendituresfrom the Ministry of Municipal affairs and Housing. Even some of thatdata wasn't organized properly. He cobbled that side of the report together but wasunable to complete the part which focused on quality and level of services.

But hesays expenditures arejust half of the total equation.

The study created furtherquestions with thequality ofservices Sudbury taxpayers received.

"We don`t have access to any data that fills the other side of the equation, the actual level and quality of services;what [level of services] you're getting, for whatyou pay for."

Cuddy says this was a majorroadblock to the study. Hecallsit a transparency issue. He saystaxpayers should know if they're getting their money's worth.

The biggest recommendation from the NorthernPolicy Institutereport is to enhance the transparency around reporting on the quality of the service being provided.

Cuddywants to see a more standardized, province-wide approach for reporting this information through the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

He says this would allow for consistent, reliable, publicly-available data across all municipalities in Ontario. It would also bea vital step to understanding if municipalitiesare running more efficientlyor not.

Things are different around Greater Sudbury nowthan they were at the time of amalgamation in 2001. The city has an open data portal,where municipal data from the past several years can be accessed.

Open data portal launched July 2015

Greater Sudbury's manager of Software and Business Applications in Information Technology,Ron St.Ongesays they offer raw dataonline for the public.

He says the information is useful, but doesn't deal with the level or quality of a particular service.

"We just put in the raw data so that you can make your own determination. We don't want to summarize data. We'll give you the full list of data so that you canactually review it and make your own analysis, determinations and look for insights that are useful to yourself."

St. Onge says some of the data dates back to amalgamation, but most is from the past few years. The IT staff continuesto add more and more data whichthe public can openly access.

He says the portal just marked its one year inexistence.

They'll be reporting to council in the fall on what data they've provided on the site and the next steps they will take.